Reflections and Comments 1865-1895 | Page 9

things will be
careful how he denounces people whose manners differ from his own
for want of spirituality or morality, and we may add that any historical
student engaged in comparing the morality of the age in which he lives
with that of any other age which he knows only through chronicles,
will do well to exercise the same caution for the same reasons.

THE "COMIC-PAPER" QUESTION
It is recorded of a patriotic member of the Committee of Ways and
Means, that after hearing from the Special Commissioner of the
Revenue an elaborate and strongly fortified argument which made a
deep impression on the committee in favor of a reduction of the
whiskey tax, on the ground that the then rate, two dollars a gallon,
could not be collected--he closed the debate, and carried the majority
with him, by declaring that, for his part, he never would admit that a
government which had just suppressed the greatest rebellion the world
ever saw, could not collect two dollars a gallon on whiskey. A large
portion of the public approaches the comic-paper problem in much the
same spirit in which this gentleman approached the whiskey tax. The
country has plenty of humor, and plenty of humorists. It fills whole
pages of numerous magazines and whole columns of numerous
newspapers with really good jokes every month. It supplies great
numbers of orators and lecturers and diners-out with "little stories,"
which, of their kind, cannot be surpassed. There is probably no country
in the world, too, in which there is so much constantly going on of the
fun which does not need local knowledge or coloring to be enjoyed, but
will bear exportation, and be recognized as the genuine article in any
English-speaking part of the world. Moreover, there is in the real
American stories an amount of suggestiveness, a power of
"connotation," which cannot be affirmed of those of any other country.

A very large number of them are real contributions to sociology, and of
considerable value too. Besides all this, the United States possesses,
what no other nation does, several professed jesters--that is, men who
are not only humorous in the ordinary sense of the term, but make a
business of cracking jokes, and are recognized as persons whose duty it
is to take a jocose view of things. Artemus Ward, Josh Billings, and
Mark Twain, and the Rev. P. V. Nasby, and one or two others of less
note, are a kind of personages which no other society has produced, and
could in no other society attain equal celebrity. In fact, when one
examines the total annual production of jokes in the United States, one
who knows nothing of the past history of the comic-paper question can
hardly avoid the conclusion that such periodicals would run serious risk
of being overwhelmed with "good things" and dying of plethora. Yet
the melancholy fact is that several--indeed, all that have been
started--have died of inanition; that is, of the absence of jokes. The last
one says it offered all the great humorists in the country plenty of work,
and their own terms as to pay, and failed to enlist them, and the chance
jokes apparently were neither numerous enough nor good enough to
keep it afloat.
Now what is the cause of this disheartening state of things? Why can
the United States not have a comic paper of their own? The answers to
this question vary, though of course not greatly. They are mostly given
in the shape of a history, with appropriate comments, of the
unsuccessful attempts made to establish comic papers; one went down
because it did not sympathize with the liberal and humane movements
of the day, and laughed in the pro-slavery interest; another, because it
never succeeded in getting hold of a good draughtsman for its
engravings; and another venture failed, among other mistakes, we are
told, because it made fun of the New York Tribune. The explanation
which finds most general favor with the public is, that while in England,
France, and Germany "the great dailies" confine themselves to the
serious treatment of the topics of the day, and thus leave room for the
labors of Punch, or Kladderadatsch, or Charivari, in America all
papers do their own joking; and, if it seems desirable to take a comic
view of anything or anybody, take it on the spot in their own columns.
Hence any paper which starts on a comic basis alone meets with rivals
in all its sober-minded contemporaries, and comes to grief. The

difficulty it has to contend with is, in short, very like that which the
professional laundress or baker has to contend with, owing to the fact
that families are accustomed to do their own washing and bake their
own bread. And, indeed, it is